Hitting Home: Climate Change in Colorado

In this lesson, students examine and interpret varied observational datasets and are asked to determine whether the data supports or does not support the statement: climate change is occurring in Colorado.

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Teaching Tips

Teaching Tips

Consider not showing a video to begin the lesson. Do the activity first and use the videos as an extension or summary of the concept.

About the Science

To investigate whether climate change is happening in Colorado, students examine and analyze various datasets concerning changes in peak river flow, glaciers, temperature, fire frequency, snowpack, changes in birds and plants.

Uses real data: observations of various natural systems.

Snowpack and fire data are several years old.

Comments from expert scientist: It addresses the various elements that students can experience and shows the changes in these parameters. Typically trend lines are put on graphs. Relating the potential climate change to location of species is very interesting and should resonate with students as to impacts of climate change.

About the Pedagogy

Students engage in a guided version of the scientific process, beginning with observations of real data and continuing through analysis and hypothesis testing, ending with validation or invalidation of hypothesis. Students then do a performance assessment at the end of the activity (write an article to the newspaper).
Various handouts used for the analysis of the research question provide good scaffolding.